Hey everyone, this is Part two of the Amy Fisher story. If you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend starting there. Just a note that we discuss sexual violence and abuse in this episode.
The final chapter in the saga of the Long Island Lolita, Amy Fisher coming face to face with her victim.
Just six months after seventeen year old Amy Fisher shot Mary Joe Bettafuco, the wife of her thirty eight year old boyfriend, or statutory rapist based on his later conviction, Amy appeared before a judge for sentencing.
It was the first time Amy Fisher had seen Mary Joe Buttafuco since May nineteenth, nineteen ninety two. This time the two met in a court to hear a judge sentence.
Amy Fisher, you are.
A tragedy in disgrace to yourself, to your family, to your friends, and to society, and you deserve no less than the maximum sentence I can impose by law.
Her punishment fifteen years in prison. But going away wouldn't end the media frenzy around Amy or help her escape that label, the Long Island Lolita that still follows her to this day.
I'm Susie Vanaker and I'm Jessica Bennett.
And this is in Retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped.
Ust and that we just can't stop thinking about.
This week, we're talking about Amy Fisher and how she came to be known as the Long Island Lolita, but we're also talking about the way that word lolita and that trope is used to paint young girls as precocious and seductive. This is part two, jess I've been thinking about kind of what happens to Amy Fisher and all this right, and that she's punished, but she's punished so much more heavily than Joey. But Afuko, who she claims,
really was essentially a co conspirator, right. She claimed that he talked a lot about wanting his wife gone, that he talked about his insurance policy, that he wanted her dead, and so she comes up with this plan to ingratiate herself with him or to please him. This is really something she does because she's doing something that he wants.
And she goes away from five to fifteen years and he gets four months, right, and that that is really telling about the way society sort of looked at her versus him.
So how does this compare to other people in similar situations at that time or I don't know if anything could be really similar, but well, again there are actually.
Things that are, like, not exactly similar, but give you a sense of how disproportionate the way she was punished was and sort of what that said about the kind of bloodthirst around her. So another really famous tablet case at the time was the Preppy killer Robert Chambers. And for people who don't remember that case, Robert Chambers killed a woman that he was having a sexual encounter with in Central Park and claimed it was consensual rough sex. He choked her to death, so doesn't seem like a
consensual encounter. But he got the same sentence as Amy Fisher. He literally killed someone. I mean, she did try to kill someone, but it's interesting that they got the exact same sentence. But the other thing that's interesting is she got two million for bail and he got one hundred and fifty thousand. I mean, that's a really big contrast in terms of how dangerous they assessed her to be as compared to him, who was an actual killer.
So this also reminds me of what I think was the biggest tabloid story before Amy Fisher, which was William Kennedy Smith JFK's nephew who was accused of raping a woman on the beach in Palm Beach, Florida, where he was with his uncle Ted Kennedy. Yes, and he was acquitted in I think one of the shortest deliberation periods ever, in less than eighty minutes by atory.
Yeah.
And I think it's interesting because a lot of people have kind of forgotten about this case. But to give you an idea of just how big a case it was. At the time, when I was in high school, I had a poster in my room that said William Kennedy Smith Meet Thelma and Louise, and it was a picture of Thelma and Louise. I mean what At the time,
it was a very very prominent case. If you cared about women and rape and feminist issues, you were following it because it felt like he got away scott free because he was a.
Kennedy and Thelm and Lois. That was basically like saying he should be killed. Yes, basically they had a gun in their hand. It was like a picture of elm em Loui's with a gun in their hand.
I should have been about that, Like it was like a photocopied poster like William Kennedy Smith meet melmanis.
Wow, that's like very scum manifesto of you.
Well, you can imagine a boarding school. I was like really like out there, okay.
And so my sense is that Joey, you know, he goes to jail for four months, he gets out, he like moves on, and this continues to follow Amy into here we are twenty twenty three talking about this case.
Yeah.
I mean, what's interesting is that the only reason he kind of doesn't fade into obscurity is he really tries to stay in the spotlight. Right. He moves to La, he tries to become an actor, he has a public access show, who loves the attention, He's constantly giving press conferences, and he just never stops trying to be in the spotlight.
Whereas she has attempted in various different ways over the years to kind of move on, and one of the things she said in an interview at some point was anytime he does something crazy, or he does something buffoonish, or he gets arrested, all across the newspapers again, it's the Long Island Lolita, Like I'm the one that can't get away from this, even though he's the one that is often keeping this story in the headlines, and that this is a label she just cannot escape for the
rest of her life. And it's also so recognizable, right like, the minute you put Long Island Lolita in the headline, most people who were alive during that story have an immediate recollection of her. They can picture her, the long hair and the bangs and the Long Island of it all.
And I think you were telling me earlier that you know some of the adjectives used for Amy in all of these stories and newscasts about her, where things like sick, spoiled, her, teens maker, arrogant, reverted.
Like all the adjectives used for her are about how crazy she is, how sex hungry she is. But they also really go out of their way to generally refer to her as a woman. The prosecution only ever refers to as a woman. She's very rarely called a girl,
although she is quite literally still a girl. She's under eighteen, but there's this real sort of need to make her into an adult with agency, and to make her into this like very sexually aggressive being, because there's no way that she can be a victim, right, she has to be the perpetrator, and that's partially because she has done
something violent. Right. The thing about this case that's complicated is that there is this sort of like innocent woman, Mary Joe, who she has, you know, harmed in this like extremely aggressive way. And so it is I think impossible for the public imagination to hold the idea that both Mary Joe and Amy might be victims, not that Mary Joe is the victim and Amy is this sort of monster who has wrought vengeance on her.
Yeah, what stands out is that in the beginning, I'm sort of thinking of her as a villain, But as you begin to learn all these different little things about the case and her background and how she was treated, and you peel back these layers, it's almost like she becomes more of a victim, and yet she never totally sheds that villain archetype or whatever you want to call it.
Totally, because it feels like, when you go back and read the coverage now that she's as much sort of being punished and villainized for being this sexual being as she is for what she did to Mary joe It's like there's this sense that because she is seen as promiscuous, she needs to be punished and put in her place right that it's like she can't just be like a teen girl who came to that promiscuity through abuse, which we know was in her background, or because she's been
sort of like victimized by Joey. The fact that she's a prostitute is meant to indicate that she's some sort
of harlot that deserves to be punished. And in fact, there's like this really interesting detail that when the prosecutor is trying to convince the judge to give her a two million dollar bail, one of the justifications for that he uses is that she's a prostitute, and he's like, if we let her out, she will just fade into a life of prostitution and never be found again, as if she's not literally like the most famous person in the country, Like there is no way for her to
fade into obscurity. She's on every newspaper cover in New York City, but it's like they continuously go back to Thistle is a way to make it seem like she's this deranged sick person that needs to be like boxed up and put away.
Okay, So I mean I think we should talk about that directly because we're talking about this really complicated case. There are many things at play here, but we are largely talking about one thing, which is the Lolita trope. Yes, And I almost think we need to pause for a minute to remind our listeners and ourselves maybe the origins and connotations of that word.
Yes, of Lolita, which is from the nineteen fifty five novel written by the Russian American novelist Vladimir Nabokov. The book, for those who don't remember, is about a middle aged professor who becomes obsessed with a twelve year old girl who he nicknames Lolita. Eventually he becomes her stepfather and then kidnaps and sexually abuses her. And what's so interesting about the Lolita trope is that it is quite literally a book about a man who kidnaps and rapes a child.
But over time, over the course of the last seventy years, the definition of a lolita has changed so much that it is no longer considered the term for someone who's abused, but instead Miriam Webster literally defines it as a precociously seductive girl today.
That is the twenty today night.
That is the today definition of it. So it's become this shorthand for a girl who's sexual before her time, like a seductress, when that's fundamentally not what the character is in the book. And in fact, in my conversation with Amy Pagnosi, that's the New York Post reporter we spoke to earlier, she mentioned that she really fought the New York Post on using the term Lolita for that infamous headline. Yeah.
I was a lid major in school and I was one of always one of my favorite books, and it's about a pedophile. So I kept saying, this is not what that means. But you know, I think it's it's something that a lot of men like to think that women that age actually want them.
I think that my most vivid recollection of that idea of the Little Lita is the movie American Beauty, which.
I loved growing up.
Oh interesting Storry Kevin Spacey, who we, along with many people think of in a new way now. But he's basically playing a man who has a midlife crisis and becomes completely infatuated with his teenage daughter's best friend.
So you may not know this because I did not know this until we were researching this episode. But American Beauty was inspired by the Amy Fisher story. The screenwriter said that he saw this comic book that was released after she went to prison, and it sort of inspired him. Comic book about Amy Fisher, about Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafa Go, and it inspired him to finish the movie.
This is Alan Ball, the screenwriter.
Yeah, so there's actually a quote from him, and I'll read you some of it. He says, I'd been working on the basic premise for eight years. The genesis of the idea for me was the Amy Fisher Joey buttafuco business in New York City when I was living there. I was working at Adweek and I came out one day and some guy was selling a comic book about Amy and Joey. On the one side was this virginal looking Amy and a big, leering, lectrous, predatory Joey. And you flip it over and he's all buttoned up and
she's all tarted up in predatory sluttie vixen. I remember thinking the truth is somewhere in those and we will never know what it is. Wow, fascinating, isn't that fascinating? Which is also like is the truth somewhere in the middle. We know that she was a teen girl, So again it's this need to kind of turn the teen girl into someone who is tempting, who is seducing, who is calculating, who has agency, and is in fact the instigator, when in reality that is rarely the case, right, Like young
girls are rarely these like evil geniuses. We're trying to like seduce men.
And even if they are, by the way, you're a grown ass adult. So maybe, yeah, exactly a little perspective. Good point, But this is far from the first film to be inspired by the Amy Fisher story.
Correct, yes, this is far from the only movie to be inspired by Amy Fisher. In fact, the most famous movies that were inspired by her are these three TV movies that came out right after she went to jail. They came out sort of one right after the other. Two of them I think aired on the same night, and one of them aired like the week before. As you might remember, the way that Amy makes bail is she sells her version of the story and then Joey
and Mary Joe. But if Fuco sell their version of the story, and then there's a third version that gets made, and this one is based on Amy Pagnosi's New York Post columns, and she's actually a character in the film. Here's Amy again.
I got a lot of offers from a lot of different people, and the one from ABC seemed to be the best.
Woman.
I really really loved being a columnist more than anything. But the movie money was great because all I had to do was give them access to the notes that I had. The screenwriter was wonderful. I actually think of all of the three movies, it was the best one, I agree, And the person who played me was incredibly nice.
You know, I don't know.
I mean, do we need three Amy Fisher movies?
Do we need one Amy Fisher movie?
No?
Of course not.
There were much much more important things to cover.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a very good point.
But it really shows how much the Amy Fisher story literally became entertainment.
Yeah. I mean, these TV movies were really popular and started pretty big name actresses at the time. Drew Barrymore starred in.
One, Alyssa Milano was in one of the other ones.
Right, Yeah, so Alyssa Milano was in one called Casualties of Love, the Long Island Low Leita story.
Okay, it's just that.
I like all the guys, I mean the boys in my school one, two, three, you know, and it's like over.
And then there was a little known actress named Noel Parker who was in the lethal Lolita version. I mean, I know what I did, but I just don't understand how it all began.
And then Drew Barrymore is in the most popular one, the Amy Fisher, the Amy Fisher story.
Joey is the only man I love and I will do whatever it takes to his wife out of the way.
Which side not interesting because Drew, as a child actress, has talked, i think in more recent years about being very sexualized from a young age.
Yes. And actually one thing that's interesting is that in the research Sharone who works on the show, found this clip of her talking about playing Amy Fisher, and in that interview with Conan O'Brien, he is sexualizing her in really creepy ways, like he's asking about her tattoos in
this creepy way. And it should be noted that Drew Barrymore was also underage like she must have been maybe eighteen when she did this interview, so she is in fact in playing this character being sexualized and then experiencing the same sort of media reaction to it, which is like a weird meta thing that goes on. But what's also interesting is that these films are so much more popular than the networks expect right, they all air in primetime, which is just not a thing you would see like
now they would just become lifetime movies or whatever. But they all air on primetime television. They do really well, and in some ways they kind of are the beginning of this true crime era that now is so huge, especially in podcasts. But this is the beginning of entertainment executives beginning to understand how much of an appetite there is for these true stories. And actually this is part of a genre of film in the nineties that becomes
really popular. It starts in nineteen ninety two, the year that Amy shoots Mary Joe. In fact, in the same month, there is this movie Poison IVY, also starring grew Marymore that comes out about a teenage girl who becomes obsessed with her friend's father and she murders her friend's mother to try and get to the fall. So again this seductress, this like young girl, and this.
Is not based on Amy and Joey's story. This just happens to be coming out at the same time.
Yes, isn't that crazy. It literally comes out the month that this incident occurs. And this is also the Fatal Attraction era, right, Yes, so this is right after Fatal Attraction. Amy is constantly kind of compared to Fatal Attraction entirely coverage before she kind of becomes her own cautionary tale.
Right She love a sexy, murderous woman, yes, but also like vengeful the essentially they are all the original e right.
They are the women who tempt these good men away from their good wives, and they lure them into this horrible life that otherwise they would not be lured into. It's just like really removes agency from men, which is I think why men love these stories, right, they're never responsible for their bad behavior.
Well, to be fair, I think women love these stories too.
Yeah, it is true. I don't know why women.
Love these stories on largely men who are watching these is it? And maybe we don't know, But I bet it's not.
I think it's both. Yeah, I definitely don't think it's just like men who love these stories.
Wasn't there another one? Wasn't there crush or something like that?
Yes?
Was there one that's Alicia's Silverstone?
Yes? Yes? And Carrie Always, who I love from The Princess Bride. Oh, that movie was inspired by Amy Fisher, at least compared to it. It came out in ninety three. It's about this precocious child who is played by Alicia Silverstone in her first movie. She becomes obsessed with Carrie Always, who's a writer who's like renting an apartment from her family, and she's like a genius, which is also very weird.
Like the need to make them really smart I think is fascinating because again it's why they're able to manipulate these perfectly innocent men into doing these like outrageous things who can't keep it in their pants. And then there's like this weird scene where she tries to kill his girlfriend by trapping her in a room with bethes. I mean, absolutely, Oh my gosh, wild tale.
Also, I was just going to say about Alicia Silverstone, such an interesting character also in the Marvin because remember that Aerosmith song. I loved Crazy and the music video for it, where she's like this hot I think underage or much younger.
I mean I think she looked like she was like twelve at the time, and with Stephen Tyler. Yes, who you know the thing about Stephen Tyler? Right? So, Stephen Tyler in fact, was recently sued by a woman who says that he adopted her when she was underage.
Okay, so that in order to be in a relationship with.
Her, in ordered to be in a relationship with her and to take her out on the road, so he became her literal.
Well guardian, I read this story. I read this story, okay. And he is also the father of Liv Tyler, who was in the Crazy video with Alicia Silverstone.
Right.
Yes, I remember thinking they were like the hottest thing like that. I wanted to be that, like.
Video was so cool, and I think like music videos don't really have the same cachet they did then, But that music video was in itself like a huge cultural moment, like everybody saw it. It was like a very popular video. I think it was the number one video. It was like at the height of MTV, when MTV has really become its own art of the zeitgeist, so that video really was something that everybody saw.
And so it's like these things are all circling, and it's like Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco are somewhat at the center.
Somewhat at the center, right, they sort of inspire but also reflect what's kind of happening in the culture at the time, which is this kind of sexualization of young girls in this very specific way that's not as innocent children,
but as seductresses and temptresses in their own right. And one thing that I think is so interesting about the movie Crush is that there's actually a review of it I found, which I think speaks to how disturbing these movies kind of were and were never acknowledged to be. Like I saw a Crush when it came out, and I remember, like the movie, I was like a teen girl at the time. Right, the critic rights, the movie
is virtually an invitation to child abuse. In shot after shot, Shapiro pans his camera up one side of Silverstone's body and down the other, as if it was perfectly all right for us to visually caress the thighs of a fourteen year old.
Wow, this was in the Washington Post. Yes, Hal Hinston, I'm looking at it now. Yeah, thanks holl And.
Also, the way that quote ends is he says, my guess is that most people will find the whole business creepy, and even creepier still the people who made it. But in fact people didn't find them creepy, and the movie did well. It was a success.
I mean, I guess it's not really that surprising that people loved those movies.
At the time.
They were fantasy.
There was something enticing about how dark and twisted they were.
Yeah, and it's a little taboo, you know, even though these girls were always punished in the end, there was something compelling about girls who are aggressive and open about wanting men, Like as a teen girl, you didn't see that very often, and in a lot of ways, that's what was underlying the coverage of Amy.
Oh, that's a good point, Like, of course she's punished for the actual crime she commits, but one thing the media continues to fixate on is how freely she talks about sex and wanting it.
Yeah, which now, of course we would interpret as an immediate red flag of some kind of trauma in her past, But back then that was just another freakish point to zero in on.
And to make fun of, Like, don't you remember how this became a huge bit on USNL.
You've seen the other three. Now the fourth Network presents the fourth Amy Fisher story. Tory's spelling is Amy Fisher in Aaron spellings Amy Fisher one oh five one six.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's the other side of the coin. Right, So, on the one hand, Amy is being presented in this sort of like very villainous way, but also the story lends itself to comedy, right, So the Late night comics love it because honestly, the name is so ridiculous, right, Like, but a Fuco is a ridiculous name. It just sounds funny, And so his name alone just becomes a punchline that the Late night comics are using over and over.
Again number three and get one more cheap laugh by saying the word but a Fuca.
Also, a thing we haven't really talked about is there's this real obsession about Amy and Joey's accents at the time. They have these very thick, long island accents, ok that I don't think we're all that commonly heard outside of the Tri State area. And so their accents are really rife for impressions, right, I mean, you can really hear the Long Island in them, and that culture feels very
unique to the rest of the country. And because I love it so much, let's listen to this great example from the sketch comedy show in Living Color with Jim Carrey.
Ma.
You know, the Long Island will lead up and.
Right, so I want to take us back to the case itself. This obviously becomes a huge media spectacle. I don't think I had any idea that that many works of film were based on this story. But you mentioned, Susie that Amy is really never able to live a normal life after this.
So what actually happens?
So she tells her own story a few different ways. She does an interview with Inside Edition. There's also a book she writes in nineteen ninety four with Sheila Weller, who is a very well known journalist and has gone on to write a number of books about very famous women Carrie Fisher, Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Chris Jian Almenpoor And it's really the first time that Amy extensively tells her side of the story. She was raped by a
handyman in her home when she was around thirteen. This book reveals that she had also been sexually abused by a person close to the family when she was very young, starting around three or four years old. And also it
just paints a very different picture of Amy. It's a much more nuanced portrait of her as shy and naive, still sort of hoping that Joey's going to come in and save the day, or that Joey still loves her, desperate for kind of male approval from anyone who's willing to give it to her, and it sort of starts to give you a hint that she has some mental illness that's untreated and contributes to her thinking that, you know, this shooting never registers for her as a real crime
when she's doing it, she doesn't really have a sense of consequences when she embarks on this thing that forever changes her life. It's almost like she's so naive and so detached from reality. She's more worried about her parents grounding her than she is about going to jail. And the interviews in the book take place right before she goes to jail, then continue throughout her first couple of years, So it also describes what that transition is of going to jail and kind of the shock of that.
So when is she actually released from prison?
So she's released in nineteen ninety nine, and interestingly, Mary Joe, who spends years talking about how sick she is and saying that she doesn't feel safe with Amy out and about, is instrumental in her release. She appears at a parole hearing for her, Amy apologizes to her directly. They have this like moment in court, and it is ultimately what causes the judge to decide she's served enough time and change her deal and release her.
What happens then, what does she do with her life?
So she actually marries a man she met on an online dating site after she got out of prison. He's an older man, another one. He's like a videographer, like I think, like a mostly wedding videographer. They have three kids. At some point they've moved to Florida and been keeping with every other man in her life. Eventually he betrays her. There's a period where they are separated in two thousand
and seven, and she does this weird thing. Her and Joey do this weird thing where they pretend to get back together because they're trying to shop a reality show, and her husband says that this makes him angry, and so he releases one of their sex tapes. So, like every other man that she's ever trusted, he essentially betrays her with revenge porn, and he releases this sex tape of her. But it is hugely successful, and the sex tape is successful.
What does that mean? Is successful rests money.
And lots of people watch it. But you know, despite the fact that the tape is released without her consent, she decides to lean into it and start doing porn regularly. And she says about it at the time, I'm I have two choices. I can sit there and say it doesn't exist, which it does exist, you know, or I can do the intelligent thing, which for Amy Fisher means making the best of the situation and making money. So
she so she starts porn, starts doing porn. She does her own pay per view adult film called Amy Fisher Totally Nude and Exposed.
Oh wow, Okay, yeah.
She makes a handful of adult movies that starts in two thousand and seven, but in twenty eleven she stops making the films. She decides to leave the porn industry, and in twenty fifteen she gets a divorce and then she moves home to Long Island and the New York Post continues to haunt her, and the last published report about her is a New York Post piece where they have found her doing camgirls stuff. That's before OnlyFans, so you know, she's doing like sort of sex work through camgirl.
They portray it as an incredibly seedy it's like a very sad story. They confront her, she denies that it's her or even though she used her name and they have her image, and she's living with her mom again actually, and that's really the last we hear from Aymie Fix When is that? That's in twenty seventeen. Then after that, I think that year or the year following, she changes her name. She goes to court, she listens to have
a name change, and she no longer does press. And that's really when she stops being in the public eye. The thing that's interesting is that many of the occasions where she goes back into the public eye, right this sort of like the porn and the reality show, are occasions when she's trying to make money from her past. Like, one thing you realize is that she goes to jail
when most kids are going to college. She doesn't have anything to fall back go, so the only thing she has to kind of fall back on is her notoriety. So it's interesting that finally in the late twenty tens, she just gives up on that and decides to move on. And when she's contacted to be part of projects that Mary Joe or Joey are still willing to do, she refuses.
Okay, so Joey's still doing interviews? Is he still like, what's his deal?
Yes, Joey and Mary Joe are still somewhat in the public eye. So Joey is essentially just like a buffoon for a long time. As I mentioned, he moves to California to become an actor. He has some bit parts. He is arrested again in nineteen ninety five for soliciting an undercover cop as a prostitute, and he is obviously in violation of his probation at that time, so he goes back to jail. He's just generally like a very
sketchy dude. Mary Joe eventually divorces him in two thousand and three, Mary Joe stood by Joey for such a long time, And I think that's also like a really interesting part of the story that we haven't had a chance to explore, which is that there's this sort of psychological thing that happens with Mary Joe where she is so defensive of Joey. It's almost like she needs to deny the affair to somehow not give Amy any excuse for what she did. So for so many years she
denies that the fair even happened. She stands by him, she calls Amy names, but then eventually she realizes that Joey is a sociopath, like literally releases.
Them a sociopaths called.
Getting It through My Thick Skull, Why I stayed, what I learned, and what millions of people involved with sociopaths need to know. So she writes that book in two thousand and nine. Wait, sorry, one clarification.
So is she still with Joey when she's helping Amy to get out of jail.
Yes, she is still with him. I think that's one of the interesting details about Okay. She doesn't divorce him until two thousand and three, and then in two thousand and five she goes on Oprah and tells her story for you know, some reason like where are they now
or whatever. And actually a plastic surgeon reaches out to her after that appearance because she still has paralysis on one side of her face, and he offers to fix it and she accepts, and in fact, later on there's a an Oprah show where the results of her plastic surgery are revealed.
So it's still times it's like they just can't stop doing this media site, like they're trapped, and they're kind of trapped in useless and then the next generation becomes part of it.
Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't talk about the Butafuco children that much. Right, there were nine and twelve when this happened, and at the time we just didn't really think about generational trauma. But they saw their mother shot, they saw their father behave like an absolute creep on television for years, and then you know, this story follows them forever. I mean, they have the Butafuco last name. In fact, the Sun has changed his last name. You cannot find him.
Right.
Also, it's not like Smith, like this is the most recognizable. I mean, this is the same when I was reporting on Monica Lewinsky.
Yeah, same deal.
It's like that name is so specific, so loaded and memorable.
Yes, it's impossible to run away from, you know. So either you change your name like the sun does, or you do what the daughter did, which is just accept that it's part of her history and talk about it publicly. You know. In twenty nineteen, actually Mary, Joe and Joey and the Daughter do a special on ABC called Growing Up but Afuco where Jesse, the daughter, shares what it was like for her to be part of the story.
So the daughter actually has a relationship with her father.
Yeah, Jesse was talking to him at the time of the special, but within a year she says on a podcast that she stopped speaking to Joey, that she's basically gone no contact and that he's toxic and she no longer wants to have any relationship with him. I mean, good for her, yeah, I mean she's talked extensively about what the shooting and all that followed it did to her. You know, she went through a lot of depression and anxiety,
She had eating disorders and addiction to alcohol. So you know, you can see why she blames him for a lot of that.
It's really like Jesse's experience shows us how this story really continues to affect everyone involved.
I mean, ultimately, I think the option he has chosen to try and live a quiet and private life, as much as that's even possible for her, is the choice I would make too. But I'm sure it's not easy, and I don't think there is a right answer here. So I did try and contact Amy for this story because I wanted to let her have the last word if she wanted it, but I wasn't able to reach her.
So I found something she said in two thousand and eight when a reporter asked her if she still cared about the public perception of her.
You know what, at this point, you know, I've this is maybe this is awful to say. You know, I am known for something that is not a good thing. So you know, I've had a lot of negative media attention. People have said a lot of horrible things about me, so over the years, you know, it's made my shell a little bit hardened. And no, I don't care what people think about me anymore. You know, if people like me,
that's wonderful. And I think I'm a nice person, and I think because of everything I've been through in my life that it's made me actually a kinder, more understanding person.
So interesting.
I mean, I hope for her sake that is true, But I do wonder if she'd still say that today, Susie. I know you mentioned we've tried to contact her for the podcast, but maybe it's worth saying. You know, Amy, if you're listening, we would still love to talk to you. And I do hope for her sake that she has been able to move on.
Yeah, me too, And I think that's a good place to leave it for today. This is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening. Is there a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about and want us to explore in a future episode. Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find us on Instagram at in retropod.
If you love this podcast, please rate and review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram, which we may or may not delete.
You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books Feminist Fight Club and This Is eighteen in Redhead.
Respect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media. Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and associate producer.
Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel. Our artwork is from Kentagram. Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Cosperelli, sound correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith. We are your hosts Suzie Bannaccarum.
And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers.
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See you next week.